A lost ship glimpsed across the stars.
A saint born of suffocating fear.
A warrior surviving the massacre of her people, walking the snow with her heart exposed.
A girl in a floating city, dejectedly searching for symbols to match her grief.
In this collection, Michael Le Baron, accompanied by Amanda M. Jansson's art, spins twelve stories of dark wonder and mythic horror across strange planets and forgotten ages. Otherworldly saints. Collapsing gods. Love that fractures the universe.
Spanning dying plateaus, monstrous woods, the fractures of romantic obsession, and dreamlike corridors of time, where the strange is intimate, and the sacred is terrifying, these interconnected tales explore what happens when the sacred turns monstrous, and the monstrous becomes divine.
Between theodicy and absurdism, Le Baron embraces mythic ambiguity: evil as the echo of divinity in a broken mirror, horror as the weight of meaning pressing down on fragile minds.
This collection is intended for adult and young adult readers who appreciate thought-provoking narratives, richly imagined worlds, literary prose, dark and atmospheric settings, and character-driven plots. It will appeal to those who enjoy speculative fiction that explores complex human dilemmas, cosmic horror, philosophy, and the blending of the mundane with the fantastical. Readers who enjoy authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Jeff VanderMeer, and HP Lovecraft would find this collection engaging.